Grounding a bloody tyrant

Are there any instances where it is okay for limited military intervention based purely on humanitarian grounds? If so, then where could such actions be acceptable?

The short answer is yes, and one very obvious place would have been the country formerly known as Yugoslavia. For much of its history, Yugoslavia was a communist state led by Marshall Josef Broz Tito. Yugoslavia was comprised of formerly independent republics whose history with each other was often less than friendly. Only Tito was able to forge a government that all of its different nationalities recognized. After Tito’s death in 1980, the ties that once bound the nation slowly began to unravel. Eventually by 1990, the country began to dissolve in a bloody civil war.

There were more than enough war crimes committed during this period, but one in particular stands out. In the city of Srebinica, in July 1995, some 8000 Bosnian males were herded to a place outside the city when it fell to the Army of the Serbian Republic, where they were all summarily executed. This was said to be the largest act of mass murder in Europe since World War Two.

When that particular massacre took place, the war had been ongoing for some five years. Funny thing, despite the so-called New World Order that President George H. W. Bush proclaimed after Desert Storm, nothing was done to halt these atrocities. Prior to the incident in Srebinica, war criminals and war crimes were everywhere. The guilty were found on all sides, but no one, the U N, the Europeans nor the U. S. seem inclined to intervene.

The most vexing question was why there were so few active voices advocating intervention in this war-torn country. War crimes were being documented on a daily basis, ethnic cleansing was taking place pretty much everywhere and the death toll in that country was considerably higher than it needed to be had the world acted more quickly and forcibly to stop those later charged with war crimes before the war crimes were actually committed.

A similar situation is now unfolding in the African country of Libya. Its longtime leader, the despot Muammar Gaddafi, is facing the very real possibility that his regime’s days may be numbered. Rebels have already taken up arms against him, but he has responded in kind. His military was pressing a bold attack against those who hope to see a more democratic Libya. And Gaddafi promised to make everyone who’d stood up in opposition to him pay with their lives.

So, because he promised a bloodbath, and because he has a history of keeping such promises, the world has acted quickly in concert to keep this madman from engaging in mass murder. Whereas the United Nations took over a year to okay action in Yugoslavia, in Libya's case, this was done in less than a month. A no-fly zone was declared and a resolution passed so that it might be enforced.

Here the world is acting together in time to stop a massacre. And unlike the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan, the U. S. military will not be bogged down in a ground war. In fact, the U. S. has allies that are already taking the lead in this effort to protect those whose hopes are simply for democracy.